Commodores’ Cup: Read Afloat’s W.M. Nixon’s Saturday Blog today

What a brilliant insight by W. M. Nixon in today’s Afloat.ie into the fairy tale that is the Commodores’ Cup of 2014. There is so much in it so do allow plenty of time to digest it all from start to finish. In the view of this scribe the thought provoking ideas of the Irish Team Captain, Anthony O’Leary, merit much consideration and to give some idea I give here an extract to whet the appetite for more:

“As for the Irish cruiser-racing scene, Anthony O’Leary is quite clear in his own mind as to how it should go forward. “I think it’s a mistake to incorporate the ICRA Nationals in the Sovereigns Cup in Kinsale, as they’re going to do next year” says O’Leary. “The Sovereigns is one of my favourite regattas, but it’s a friendly intimate business. While the town may have the infrastructure ashore, the marina is always crowded and I don’t see how the kind of fleet they hope to attract will be comfortably accommodated there.”

“Then too” he continued, “we already have two major alternating biennial regatta weeks, in Dun Laoghaire and Cork Harbour. It’s time to accept that sailing people are seeking to focus on fewer major events, and to give a more compact annual programme their best shot. So let’s see how it would work if the ICRA Nationals simply rotated between Volvo Cork Week and the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta.”

You might well say this is dynamite, but in the early afternoon peace of the Royal Cork YC, it seemed reasonable enough. It certainly provided enough to think about while driving home along that marvellous highway which the National Roads Authority have obligingly installed the whole way from Carrigaline to Fingal.”